Buried deep within Nokia's press release about its financial results, there's a line that pretty much signals the end of one of the most popular and successful mobile operating systems in history. With Nokia retiring its use, Symbian is no more.

Up until recently or to be more exact till the quarter Elop issued his burning Nokia memo, destroying there cash-cow a year before they had the new product in markets, Nokia was number 1 for many many years, making huge profits, increasing them quarter by quarter.

That is revisionist history, Nokia was in deep trouble for some time already when Elop took over.

And Symbian wasn't a cash cow - S40 is what kept (and keeps) Nokia afloat. What Symbian did have: immense R&D costs (more than the entire R&D of Apple!) for not much return.